On What's Your Most Played Song?
Margo Jefferson's is the best - "If You Want Me To Stay."
My most played song is Love The Way You Lie (43) but I've switched hard drives a few times since I first got iTunes so that's not necessarily representative.
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On Adam Gopnik And The Bourgeois Guillotine
Wow, you guys are so cool.
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On Photos of Sara: The Fake Stalker and His Secret Tumblr
I actually think it is kind of funny. Not, like, super funny, but kind of funny. Which seems like the reaction that everyone involved in person has. I think its funniness/interestingness derives from the fact that Michael Walker isn't ACTUALLY interested her like a stalker is. I think that the creepy element of stalking is the interest rather than the behavior. Are there any other examples of stalking where it's just behavior and no emotional motivation? I think that's interesting! Like a cop-and-serial-killer story.
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On 'Confessions of a Shopaholic': If Patricia Highsmith Wrote Chick Lit
I have to say I really like(d) the original couple Shopaholic books (and "Shopaholic and Sister" is kinda OK because Becky actually learns a lesson in it?) but the later sequels are just gross and I'm reviled by Becky's behavior.
BUT! Sophie Kinsella's other books are so good . . . my favorite is The Undomestic Goddess. I think it's genuinely good not just "guiltily" good. And Twenties Girl, Remember Me? and Can You Keep A Secret? are so good too! The funny thing is that her books as Madeline Wickham totally blow (I forget if that's her real name or Sophie is or both are pseudonyms) - they are melodramatic and if the style is supposed to be the source humor, they don't quite achieve it.
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On What's Invisible At Harvard: A Conversation
@animalmimicry Great post!
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On What's Invisible At Harvard: A Conversation
@Ellie I bizarrely wrote "employees" where I meant to write "applicants." They sound alike?
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On What's Invisible At Harvard: A Conversation
@harrumph I have a slightly different definition of "reasonable assumption" because I think wouldn't consider an assumption that could be in error as frequently as 15% to be reasonable, but maybe I'm just being hyper-sensitive.
I do think there is SOME merit to the fact that the most intelligent people may tend to be the most successful (financially), in a broad statistical analysis, but obviously this can't possibly account for the way colleges admissions skew toward admitting the wealthy. But you also have to recognize that "good" schools don't have a better way of admitting the smartest, best students than selecting kids with the highest GPAs, with good recommendations, who apply. Harvard has no way to admit a brilliant kid who, say, drops out of school to sell drugs like some of the kids in the 4th season of the Wire, or even a brilliant kid who does great in school and doesn't drop out but is never encouraged by anyone to apply because nobody in his or her world would suggest or encourage it, and both of these scenarios are a function of socioeconomic class. Perhaps Harvard and similar schools should cast their net wider, but a) all such schools are already deluged with the upper-middle-class employees, so it's easy to see why this is not the most attractive prospect, even if it's the morally correct one b) this is one of these problems that you can most easily blame "society" (public schools, the economy, the US's socioeconomic caste system, etc.) for, that colleges have a limited scope of influence in.
I recognize that "Not all rich people go to 'good' schools" is a terrible argument for the fact that "good" schools have a majority of well-off kids at them, but I also think it's a shame to end up saying that kids at good schools are only there because they're rich. It's not true of all the kids at those good schools, as this article ably demonstrates, and moreover it's unfair to all the students equally to dismiss their individual merits like that.
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On What's Invisible At Harvard: A Conversation
@deepomega I guess I'm just not so cynical as to think that the only reason some people want to go to good schools, have parents who encourage them to go to good schools, and study hard enough to get into and do well at good schools is because their family has a lot of money. I might be biased because I was very academically successful. But I know many families where one kid in the family wanted to go to a good school (Harvard, even), was motivated to try to get in, and did, and a sibling wasn't interested and didn't go. I probably went to the "best" college of the people in my extended family, and my family DEFINITELY doesn't have the most money of our relatives. None of my relatives who went to a less-"great" school is broken up about it, I'm not upset that I didn't go to a "better" school, and nobody treats me like a child of privilege because I went to a good school. I also really hate the frenzy of college admissions, having read a lot about the subject, and firmly believe that there are many good schools, a prestigious school won't be the right school for every kid, and that unless you have very specific ambitions (a good law school, I-banking, politics) it probably won't matter much where you went to college if you did well and improved yourself. I get the sense that a lot of the readership of this site is the kind of person that is very conscious of the differences between different colleges, but I don't think the rest of the world necessarily feels that way.
You also have to WANT academic success in order to "buy it" via parental encouragement, tutoring etc. over the course of 18 years. Many people with the financial resources to do so aren't interested in it, and many who don't are. I think that academic interest (wanting to go to a good school) is substantially different from other types of expression of financial privilege.
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On What's Invisible At Harvard: A Conversation
@deepomega I thought I had mentioned this in that post, but I just realized it was actually in a different post below, where I note that "at many 'good' universities the majority of the student body is probably upper middle class, with some upper class and some lower middle class, and that this is due to social circumstances where being materially advantaged means you're more likely to get into and want to go to a 'good' school."
Of course it's true that those who start out materially privileged are more likely to attend these "great" universities. But it's also important to note that Harvard doesn't just take rich kids; they reject thousands upon thousands of them, and that this is a reason that a Harvard degree means more than that you have money.
What I meant wasn't that it's *likely* that someone with an Ivy League degree has a working class upbringing, but that it is UNREASONABLE to assume that every person who went to a "good" school is from a high social echelon. But when pressed, yes, I have to agree that if you graduated with a high GPA from a challenging university such as Harvard or MIT or wherever, that really does say more about how intelligent and diligent a student you are than about how much money your family has. Ultimately you can't really buy academic success.
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On Mad Men's Megan Draper Reads (And Wears) 1966 'Vogue'
@Olivia2.0 Wack - Megan is nowhere near being "the new Betty."